


through his eyes

by solrosan



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Artist Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Background Relationships, Backstory, Growth, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Immortal Wives Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, M/M, Personal Growth, change, progression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:49:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28190433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solrosan/pseuds/solrosan
Summary: Five times Nicolò stumbles over Yusuf's drawings and one time Yusuf shows them to him.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 54
Kudos: 247





	1. 1201

**Author's Note:**

  * For [InsaneRedDragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsaneRedDragon/gifts).



> Ages ago Red said this in a chat "I want a fic about all the times Nicky has sneaked a peak into Joe's notebook only to find nothing but pictures of him ❤️" and though I severely underestimated the time it would take me to write this, here it is! I hope you like it!
> 
> The lovely and amazing zedille has helped me out with spelling, grammar, and a few structural shortcomings. Thank you so much! ❤️

The days are growing shorter, and the weather cooler. Nicolò and Yusuf have lived together, shared a home, in Constantinople for a few years now. But after decades of war and death -- their own as much as others’ -- it still feels novel. It feels right, too. Like it’s how it’s supposed to be.

Nicolò pulls the extra blanket off the top of the wardrobe, and with it comes a rain of paper. He tries to stop them from falling, but there are too many, and most of the sheets end up on the floor.

He curses, tossing the blanket on the bed, and gets down to gather the papers. He can’t understand how there can be so many because even though Yusuf buys _a lot_ of paper -- Nicolò sometimes mutters that it’s their biggest expense after food -- he doesn’t save them. As soon as Yusuf has filled them with half-finished poems and drawings of buildings and mosaics, they use them to light fires in the kitchen.

It takes a moment before Nicolò actually looks at the papers and realises what’s on them, but when he does he sits back on his heels and just stares. It’s his sword. The same sword that he had slit Yusuf’s throat with about a century earlier, and then driven through his gut for good measure. The same sword that now rests next to Yusuf’s saif in the chest next to their bed.

The sword is drawn with such attention to detail, both in and out of its scabbard, that there is no doubt in Nicolò’s mind that it is his sword. The scratches on the hilt, the nick on the pommel. He’d know this sword anywhere, and it’s clear that Yusuf would too. Over and over Yusuf has drawn it, and after a while, Nicolò goes from impressed to uncomfortable, because why would Yusuf keep on drawing the very object that caused his death?

Sharing the pages with the sword is something else that Nicolò knows intimately -- a repetition of ten small beads followed a larger one on a string… On some of the pages, the rosary is complete, it meets in a circle and the cross is included, but on some it seems to go on forever, starting and ending outside of the page.

Again, there’s not a doubt in Nicolò’s mind that it’s his rosary. His mother gave it to him when he set out for Jerusalem, and his fingers have spent many nights and days moving the beads. He knows them so well that he can almost feel them as he traces over the drawings.

The sword and the rosary, the Christian invader. He doesn’t wonder if this is how Yusuf still sees him (he knows that he sometimes does), but he can’t say why these are the things he’s kept when they light their fires with poetry and drawings of exquisite architecture and mosaics almost daily. 

Here and there, between the sketches of swords and beads, there’s writing. Nicky’s Arabic is terrible compared to Yusuf’s Genoese, but he knows enough to be able to read what’s written. He still has to do it twice to make sure he really got it right.

_I hope he realises that I don't remember him  
As how can I remember him if I can't forget him in the first place?_

He goes back to another page and reads:

_If he is away from me, my soul is his home  
So how possibly could the heart forget who lives in the soul?_

Then on a third he finds:

_Tell my dear beloved who lives in the chambers of my heart,  
That even if I don't meet him, I still meet him_

Nicolò doesn’t know what to do with this, with lines like these surrounded by his sword and rosary. It’s not that he doesn’t know Yusuf loves him, but it still takes him aback to see it like this, stated this plainly. When he’s able to tear his eyes from the drawings, he quickly gathers the rest of the papers and puts them back on top of the wardrobe. 

He thinks that maybe he should talk to Yusuf, but decides against it before he gets the opportunity. Partly because everyone needs -- everyone deserves -- some privacy and something of their own, but also because he’s a little embarrassed about how much it warms his heart that the few drawings Yusuf has saved are indirectly of him. 

In the end, Nicolò’s just happy not everything goes into the fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poetry in this chapter is _The Chambers of My Heart_ by Al-Mutanabbi in [this translation.](http://sarahelshair.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-chambers-of-my-heart-al-mutanabbi.html)


	2. 1242

They brought nothing with them but the weapons in their hands and the clothes on their backs when Constantinople fell to the Christian army. For almost four decades, they’ve been on the move, both of them afraid of settling down again and becoming attached to a new place. It’s better to be rootless than to risk another loss like that. 

They follow the trade routes east, befriending merchants and offering their services as armed guards for the journey when they need money. Sometimes they just do it for the opportunity to travel, for the brief company of others. They have something that they can call a life. Most importantly, they have each other -- the singular thing in their existence that stays the same through it all. 

In Mashhad they keep a house, a bed that’s theirs but that they rarely sleep in, and a bookshelf where they keep a few books they’ve received as payment. And there’s a mosque -- rather, there are many mosques in Mashhad, but there is one where Yusuf goes when they are in town for more than a few nights. It’s their first, tentative attempt at a new community, and even though Nicolò feels wary about it, he knows what difference it makes to Yusuf to have people to pray with. 

They don’t spend as much money as before on leisure, or food for that matter, but they still spend a fair amount on paper. These days it’s on Nicolò’s insistence -- Yusuf only protests when their resources are scarce -- and they use much less of it to light fires.

Yusuf keeps his drawings in a leather folder. One Friday, when Yusuf has left for the mosque, Nicolò finds it on the floor, almost under the bookshelf. He picks it up to put it back on the shelf, but he remains standing with it in his hands.

He thinks of the sword and the rosary. He knows it’s silly, but he can’t help it. It’s lonely here and he… he misses God. Or he misses the relationship he once had with God. So instead of putting the folder back, Nicolò brings it to the table. For a long time, he sits with it closed in front of him, because even if Yusuf hasn’t explicitly told him that he’s not allowed to look at his work he hasn’t invited him to do it either. 

But Nicolò wants to see the beads of his mother’s rosary again, run his fingers over them and pretend that they are actually there. Just one more time. Therefore, he slowly loosens the string that keeps the folder together and looks inside

The drawings have changed, which probably is to be expected considering the time that has passed. The sword is still there, on every page, but now there are hands holding it. The hands stop at the wrists, all of them, as they would have disappeared in the sleeve.

He looks between his hands and the hands on the paper and it’s clear to him that he doesn’t know the back of his hand as well as he knows his sword. Yusuf, on the other hand, seems to.

Because of the surprise of seeing his hands, it takes him a moment to realise that the rosary isn’t there. It fills him with a strange sadness, as if he lost his mother’s rosary all over again. 

The sword is not alone, however. Yusuf has filled the papers with other objects: glasses Nicolò is fairly sure they’d owned but left behind, dates wrapped in paper as they’d bought them at the market, candles in a window Nicolò recognises all too well from their old home. Tiny, mundane details of the life they’d lived, the life they’d shared. The life they had died multiple times defending.

And his hand holding glasses, taking dates, lighting candles… 

Here and there the words _A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou_ is written, which makes Nicolò smile, because that’s a line Yusuf keeps quoting when he’s happy and content even though Nicolò can count on his fingers the number of times he’s seen Yusuf drink wine. At some point, he has to remember to ask Yusuf for the rest of the poem.

On one of the pages, close to the corner and under a sword, he finds the cross that had been attached to his rosary. It’s exactly as he remembers it and lies in the palm of an open hand.

His hand.

Nicolò puts his fingers on the cross. After what happened in Constantinople, after he drew his sword against people of his own faith in defence of the city, it’s been hard to find meaning or purpose in many of the things he’d once put his trust in. Hard to trust and hard to find comfort in any of it.

Just plain hard.

Seeing the cross in the palm of his hand, among all the things they lost -- _as_ a thing they lost, as a thing that was _taken from them_ \-- makes something break in his chest. Because it’s not only the cross he’s lost, but what it represented, and clearly Yusuf knows it too. 

He closes the folder without looking at all the drawings, feeling both incredibly adrift and incredibly understood at the same time. 

The chair scraps against the floor as he gets up. He puts the folder back on the bookshelf where it’s supposed to be. He keeps his hand on it another moment, comforted by the fact that he’s not alone.

God or no God.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The line of poetry in this chapter is from the _Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam_ in [this translation.](https://poets.org/poem/rubaiyat-omar-khayyam-excerpt)


	3. 1372

“Here.” Quynh hands over a stack of folded papers to Nicolò. “Tell your husband to be more careful with his things.”

Nicolò smiles apologetically. They’ve been travelling with the women for about eight years now, but he still doesn’t know if Quynh and Andromache refer to Yusuf as his husband because they think they are somehow, beyond reason, united in the sacrament of marriage, or if it’s linguistic confusion. They mostly communicate in Arabic, because it’s the only language they all speak, but that’s not without its problems. Their dialects differ, and Yusuf and Nicolò sometimes speak too fast for the women to keep up, since Arabic has never been Quynh’s nor Andromache’s primary language. 

He doesn’t really care why they call Yusuf his husband, because he likes the idea of Yusuf as his husband, and he knows Yusuf feels the same way.

“Thanks,” he says, frowning as he looks at the papers. “Where did you find them?”

“With the tinder,” says Quynh, almost rolling her eyes. Nicolò doesn’t have the heart to tell her that Yusuf probably put them there on purpose. Yusuf doesn’t keep any of his drawings these days when they travel as much as they do. 

They are currently in Great Viet, where they’ve been living as nomads for the last few years. As much as Nicolò misses a proper bed sometimes, he loves sleeping under the stars more. There’s something serene and spiritual about it, something he’s searched for since they left Constantinople behind. 

Living in such close proximity to other people is strange -- fantastic, but strange. The women are reserved and they keep a distance to them the same way Nicolò and Yusuf keep a distance to new places. They haven’t known each other long enough to get into why yet, but the men recognise their own loss in the women’s behaviour and respect their wariness. Still, they’re welcoming, having finally met the people they’ve dreamt of for almost three-hundred years. 

“He’s very good,” Quynh comments, looking at the drawings.

“I know.”

“And he clearly has a favourite motif,” she adds with a wink. Nicolò gives her an embarrassed smile before she walks back to the fire she’s started, because it’s obvious what she means. When he’s sure Quynh is focused on what she’s doing, he turns to the papers. 

Yusuf has talked about the difference between the paper here and at home (Nicolò gets more and more convinced every day that ‘home’ is not a place but the people you share it with, however), and Nicolò has listened without understanding. Now when he unfolds the papers, he _sees_ the difference. The fibres are different, it feels different to the touch, resulting in a completely different art style, there are more shadows now, less clear lines. Or perhaps that’s not because of the paper, perhaps that’s Yusuf having changed and grown? 

The subjects are similar to what he’s seen before. His sword has competitors in Andromache’s axe and Quynh’s bow now, but those are drawn alone, while his hands are still holding his sword, resting on the hilt, honing it. He doesn’t seem to wield it. 

There are even drawings of his hands without the sword, without anything at all. Palms up, open, and where the lines are supposed to be, Yusuf has written poetry instead.

_I have lost all my strength,_   
_but from your power_   
_I am able._

or

_I have disappeared from myself,_   
_and my attributes._   
_I am present only for you._

and

_The beloved replied,_   
_I have died to myself_   
_and I live for you._

Nicolò looks at his palms, almost expecting the words to appear there. He shakes his head at his own silliness, because he knows perfectly well that he has no words written on his hands. 

When he gets to the second-to-last page, he gasps. His own eyes are looking back at him from the paper. It’s been a long time since he last saw his reflection, but he’s changed so little -- if at all -- over the years that he still recognises himself. 

There is the bridge of his nose, the shadow of his brows… his eyes. Underneath are his hands again, and between them the words

_If I love myself_   
_I love you._   
_If I love you_   
_I love myself._

Nicolò glances in Quynh’s direction, wondering if this really is the first time she’s found Yusuf’s drawings in the tinder, or if she wanted him to see these particular ones. He looks down at his own eyes again.

There are reflections of stars in them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poetry in this chapter is from _Do You Love Me?_ by Rumi, in [this translation.](https://hellopoetry.com/poem/75703/do-you-love-me/)


	4. 1574

Malta feels like home in a way few places have in a long time. Nicolò thinks it’s the water; they’ve both lived most of their lives around the Mediterranean after all. Yusuf calls him an idiot, because if that’s all it takes for a place to feel like home, so many other places would feel like home too.

The reason doesn’t really matter, though. Malta is lovely. They are on their own again, a two-year-long break from the world. A month ago, they received a letter from Andromache and Quynh which said that they were travelling north and would write with a new address when they had one. Both Nicolò and Yusuf are glad _they_ aren’t traveling north. 

They live in a small, stone house in the outskirts of Mdina. They are part of the community; they have casual friends they eat dinner with sometimes. For the first time since the sack of Constantinople, Nicolò regularly attends mass. Life is as it should be.

One morning, Nicolò steps into the main room to see that Yusuf has left most of his books on the table before leaving for a trip to the marketplace. Muttering about how _someone_ needs to learn the difference between a table and a bookshelf, he starts to gather the books, but pauses when he notices a paper sticking out from one of them. It’s a book of proverbs, and the paper is folded once and placed between the pages as if to keep track of where Yusuf is. 

He can see part of a drawing on it and opens the book. It’s a drawing of a flower. Most of the paper is covered with flowers actually, mostly roses, but also poppies and chamomile and everything else Nicolò has managed to grow in their small garden. A smile spreads over Nicolò’s face as he looks at the blossoms. He loves the garden and being able to make things grow. It has the same serenity to it as sleeping under the stars. The sword isn’t there anymore, but his new rosary is, both in and out of his hands, wedged in here and there among the flowers.

He turns the paper around. There, taking up the entire page, is his likeness. The outline of his profile, from the hair that he needs to cut, his forehead and closed eyes -- are his lashes really that long? -- over his nose, his lips, to his chin. He’s smiling, and under the nose he holds a rose. 

Nicolò smiles as he is in the drawing.

He puts the paper back in the book where he found it and proceeds to put all the books on the shelves. He itches to look through them, to see what else Yusuf uses to mark the spot, but he doesn’t. Instead he hopes that this means Yusuf has found a better way to reuse his drawings than to use them as tinder.


	5. 1629

Abandoning the search for Quynh is the hardest thing any of them has ever done in their long lives. They had kept at it longer than they probably should have, but Andromache had to be the one to call it off. Where she finally found the strength to do it, neither Yusuf nor Nicolò knew.

Through this entire ordeal -- which is by no means over -- Nicolò has had trouble meeting Andromache’s eyes. The weight of what his faith did to the women he loves is crushing him. He hasn’t lost his faith in God, but he _has_ lost his faith in the church. It surprises him a little that he hadn’t lost it before.

There’s a war raging through Europe, one between Catholics and Protestants, which makes them seek refuge in the non-Christian world. (A place that is growing smaller at a disturbing rate.) They end up in Mogadishu and try to regroup. Try to… move on? Nicolò and Yusuf cry when Andromache isn’t there, and they take turns staying up with her when she spends her nights staring out over the ocean.

Quynh’s faith haunts them more than the story of Lykon’s. Death is something they are quite familiar with, after all, even if it’s not for them yet.

Since they arrived here, Yusuf is withdrawn and seeks solitude more than he has for the entire time Nicolò has known him. Nicolò worries about him rather than he feeling rejected, but it’d be a lie to say that he doesn’t struggle with the distance between them. 

Yusuf draws and he writes, as if there would be some truth in that the Devil really will find work for idle hands. He doesn’t burn any of it and instead saves all of it, stacking the filled sketchbooks at the foot of their bed.

Nicolò sits down on the bed with one of the books, afraid of what he might find inside but he opens it anyway. He’s expecting death, and blood, and grief… even violent terror. Instead, to his relief, he once again finds his own hands on the first page. 

But not only his hands. Yusuf has drawn his arms and his shoulders, his eyes and nose and mouth. The birthmark on his cheek. His legs, his feet. Page after page with his abs and his chest, his back and his arse, and his… cock. 

Nicolò blushes, partly because Yusuf has drawn his _cock_ , but mostly because he recognises it faster than he did his feet. 

It goes on. And on. And on. The pages are filled with parts of him. Sometimes put together -- his face, his profile, his upper body, his head and neck, his entire body -- sometimes there is an entire page with nothing but different drawings of his left hand, or his lips, or his… cock. 

One page is covered by the line _The tie that binds us is an unbreakable rope._ Over and over and over again it’s written. Nicolò knows this poem, Yusuf taught him to read using it, but seeing the tear-smudged page, the only other line he remembers is _I die of love for him._

There’s a desperation on every page that doesn't pass Nicolò by -- a frenzy, a fear. A need to make sure he will always be with him. Nicolò sees it because he walks around with the same, paralysing terror in his chest -- what if it would happen to them?

He looks at a drawing of himself smiling, probably sitting at a table, because his arms are folded and he’s leaning forward a little. He dearly hopes that this is how Yusuf would remember him if something tore them from each other. And he hopes Andromache has similar memories of Quynh, and that those are the first that comes to mind when she thinks of her.

Nicolò puts the drawings away, his hand trembling slightly as he closes the book. Then he goes to find Yusuf. He sits in the shade on their balcony, drawing yet again, but turns his sketchbook upside down when he hears steps. When he sees Nicolò, he smiles. 

Nicolò gets down on his knees and hugs him where he sits, burying his face against his chest.

“My heart,” Yusuf murmurs, moving just enough so that he can get a knee on either side of Nicolò and properly hug him back. “My heart…”

Nicolò takes a deep breath, trying to inhale everything that is Yusuf, trying to save him in his memory the way Yusuf tries to save him on paper.

There are no words to say, no promises to give. They’ve said it all already and known it all before they did. They would both rather die than give up each other, but in the end they know that they would do what Andromache did, and that knowledge hurts more than any of their many deaths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The lines of poetry in this chapter come from _Love In Bloom_ by Abu Nuwas in [this translation.](https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/love-in-bloom-3/)


	6. 1702

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...and the +1!

They’ve been in South America for about fifty years by now. Getting Andromache on a ship again had been hard, but leaving everything they knew behind was a good decision for all of them. Not that everything here is new. Humans are always humans, which gives them plenty of opportunities to do what they do best: die so that others don’t have to.

After a few terrible missions (ones where they probably did more harm than good) they’ve retreated to the foot of the Andes, to the outskirts of a village where the inhabitants don’t look at Nicolò and Andromache and see conquistadores. Three years they’ve been here, and for now, they have no plans to leave.

Nicolò keeps a garden. It’s not as successful as the one in Malta, but he hasn’t learned the climate yet. The locals are very helpful, and he’s feeling pretty smug about having picked up their language faster than Yusuf and Andromache because of it.

In the afternoons, when he’s out here working, Yusuf often joins him. Sometimes he helps, most times he doesn’t and instead reads or writes or draws. They both enjoy the silent company. Today Yusuf is drawing. Nicolò can tell the difference even from across the garden; he’s seen it so many times during their life together.

“What are you drawing?” Nicolò asks when he’s been watching him for a while. 

Yusuf looks up with a tentative, half-embarrassed smile. After a moment of hesitation he says, “You.”

Considering how many different ways Yusuf has drawn him over the centuries, Nicolò wants to say “I know, but how?” Instead he smiles and asks, “Can I see?”

Yusuf thinks about it for a moment before he hands the entire sketchbook to him. Nicolò reaches for it, but is too far away. He makes a pained noise to complain about the inconvenience as he gets up and walks over to Yusuf. Smiling, he takes the sketchbook and sits down next to him on the bench.

“It’s not finished,” says Yusuf.

“Neither am I,” Nicolò mumbles, as he looks at the drawings on the first page. The style is different from the last time Nicolò saw any of them, but that’s to be expected. He likes this style. To be fair, he’s liked all of them and he likes that Yusuf keeps honing his craft, that it changes and grows, because it means Yusuf does as well. It means that he isn’t finished yet either.

There’s nothing really special about these sketches. They’re of his hands, the back of his head as he’s lying in bed. The rosary he bought before they left Africa has also made its way in there. 

The drawing that’s unfinished is of Nicolò reading a book.

Yusuf is watching him, tense, clearly waiting for some sort of judgment. 

“They’re beautiful,” Nicolò says, and Yusuf relaxes.

Nicolò doesn’t take his eyes off the sketches. He turns the page and there’s more of the same. Here he also finds Quynh’s necklace, which Andromache now wears, and his heart breaks. He refrains from touching it and instead turns the page again.

There is a study in hands, his hands, but also...

“This is your hand,” says Nicolò, looking up with a surprised smile.

Yusuf smiles, a little embarrassed, holding up both his hands as if to show them off. “Well…”

Nicolò doesn’t know what to say. Yusuf has drawn his hands holding and wielding swords, holding rosaries and crosses, dates and flowers… He’s drawn him smiling, crying, searching. 

And Yusuf has drawn him holding his hand, holding _him._

He’s suddenly sad that they haven’t saved any of the drawings over the years, even if he knows it would have been impossible to do so.

“I wish I were the man you draw,” he says, closing the book and giving it back to Yusuf.

“You are,” says Yusuf, and at Nicolò’s sceptical look he continues, “Out of the two of us, who has spent seven hundred years watching you?”

“That would sound really creepy if you weren’t such a hopeless romantic.”

Yusuf laughs. “I have a good muse.”

Nicolò chooses not to comment on that. He takes Yusuf’s hand, entwining their fingers like they had been in the drawing. One day he’ll live up to the man Yusuf thinks he already is; one day he’ll see himself as Yusuf does.

In the meantime, he’ll be trying to get there and wondering how Yusuf will draw him next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> While writing this, I spent a lot of time staring at [this piece of art by not-xtr-art](https://not-xpr-art.tumblr.com/post/626609997835649024/a-theoretical-page-from-one-of-yusuf). It's also what inspired me to in-cooperate poetry in the fic.


End file.
